Iain Stewart: Q  If the upgrade is so safety critical that the car will not function without it having been installed, is that something we should put in the Bill?

David Williams: My understanding is that that sounds very good in principle, but how do you define that extent? Many upgrades might have a degree of safety critical improvements in their nature. How would you define the seriousness of the upgrade?

Diana Holland: The potential is there, but it is not automatic unless a range of other things are followed up at the same time. It would be fantastic to find ways of developing this so that there is social inclusion in terms for both rural areas and for disabled people, who are currently denied opportunities, but it has to be part of an overall approach to an integrated transport policy. Otherwise there is a danger that we just end up replicating congestion of one kind with another, with different insurance. However, there is a way of using this to develop a whole range of things, including much broader social inclusion.

Adrian Jones: Yes, I would certainly say that we would welcome the opportunity. While the date for roads full of fully automated vehicles is an unknown, as is the impact, our members already have concerns. In manufacturing, the apprentices needed are not engineering apprentices in the traditional sense; they are software engineer apprentices. In road transport, we have fitters and engineers who are up to their elbows in grease, but in just a few years’ time they will be up to their elbows in keyboards, iPads and screens, which is a completely different skillset.
We also need to recognise that there is concern about skills. As you know, Minister, there is a widespread acknowledgement of a driver shortage in the UK. You already know my views on that. Our members already have concerns that the technology is being used as a smokescreen in effect to say, “We can use this technology to address that skills shortage”, but it will not do that, because employers will see it as a way of reducing cost, rather than filling the skills gap.
One expert that I heard on the venerable Radio 4 was asked about the job shift of a bus driver when that bus was fully automated. The expert said, “Jobs will be  created. There may be a café on the bus and they could work in the café.” That is not comparable work. Yes, it is a job, but going from a skilled position to working  in a café—no disrespect to any café workers—is not maintaining a standard of living or the same income to that family or the Treasury. There has to be a real debate now, not only on the future, but the impact that new technologies are having on the transport industry and workers today.

Stephen Kerr: The Bill addresses fundamental issues involving electric and automated vehicles that are revolutionising how drivers and we as a society see driving. Do you think that the Bill as it stands will address the issue of public confidence in new technologiesQ ?

Robert Llewellyn: It starts to go towards that. I am doing many public appearances to discuss the impact of electric vehicles. It is effectively a disruptive technology, in the same way as cell phones and the internet. It has elements of those disruptive aspects, which are never all positive. There are some positives, but there are definitely some negatives. One of the things that it highlights is the ownership model. That is certainly something that motor manufacturers are very focused on: the way we use cars at the moment.
It is the 90:90 dilemma; I have never heard anyone dispute that. At the moment, 90% of the cars we own are idle 90% of the time. When you look at it from that point of view, any other business or industry that kept 90% of its assets idle for 90% of the time would not be in business. It is a really difficult challenge, and I do not have an answer. One of the answers that is emerging, as you have just been hearing, is autonomous vehicles. There are so many complexities, as you have listed wonderfully in the Bill so far. When I started to read it, I got a bit of a fuzzy brain, but that is the actor side of me; it is not an enormous intellect.
The challenges that it raises are fascinating. I fuel my own cars with my own fuel, which I make in my house. That has never been possible before. It is conceivable that, if I lived in the right part of the world, I could have drilled down, extracted oil, built a small refinery and filled my car, but that is pushing it a bit. This technology allows you to do that, although not all year round and not 100% of the time. How do you legislate that? How do you tax that fuel? All those things are thrown up in the air. It feels a bit wild west at the moment.
That is one aspect of it. The other aspect is the charging infrastructure. Anyone who has an electric car will talk to you about it for a year, because it is such an emerging area. When I first started driving electric cars in 2010, there was one rapid charger in the country. That belonged to Mitsubishi in Cirencester and you had to arrange to go and visit it, so it was like a day out to go down to Cirencester and use a rapid charger. For 90% of the time it did not work; all the instructions were in Japanese; and no one understood Japanese at Mitsubishi, so it was not very reliable.
However, now, if you are stupid enough—I have done it in the winter—you can drive from London to Edinburgh in a Nissan Leaf. It takes a long time, it is a miserable trip, and it is quicker on the train, but it can be done. I have driven all over the country in various electric cars, now relatively easily, so there has been a dramatic change in the infrastructure, but there are very few electric cars on the road. If you doubled the numbers overnight, there would be issues with that. I think 40% of the people in this country do not have somewhere off the street to park their car, so where do they charge them? I will not go on too long.

Robert Llewellyn: That would be ideal. One of the other problems is that the technology is changing so fast. I recently drove over a strip of road just outside Paris that has an induction-charging strip set in it. I do not think that is going to happen, because I cannot imagine the cost of putting that in the M1—it would be in the billions—but these induction plates for static charging, so when you are parked the car starts charging, are quite common now. That technology is getting cheaper.
It is really difficult—I would feel nervous suggesting that anybody invest an enormous amount. There have been failures in public-invested charging points: they are in the wrong place, they break down, they are not maintained or they are not run by the company that set them up. There have been plenty of examples of that. This is a rapidly emerging technology that keeps changing. Take even the wire you use. Finally, a bit like phones, there is a standardised type 2 connector that goes in every socket and goes in every car, but even that was a mystery a while ago. I would have a certain reluctance in saying, “Yes. Make all councils install thousands of chargers,” because they might be the wrong ones in the wrong place.
An organic development is happening with private companies, including supermarkets, that are starting to put them in car parks. Shell is now putting rapid chargers in its forecourts. It is happening, but quite slowly. I think it is probably chicken and egging like that—so there more cars, then more chargers, then more cars, then more chargers. I would not know how to suggest where to put them.